6 ms·
Syphilis microbe's family has plagued humans for millennia
- ransom1538 3y ago"Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganisms that cause syphilis1. The discovery, reported today in Nature, casts further doubt on the already shaky idea that Christopher Columbus’s crew exported syphilis to Europe." Can someone explain this to me? Why would this cast doubt? Wouldn't this just be more evidence to the export theory?
- lostlogin 3y agoMaybe the idea is that if it had been there for vastly longer, it would likely have spread up the coast to North America > Asia > Europe over that time?
- abhijat 3y agoNear the end of the article it states: 'The discovery of bejel-causing Treponema in Brazil 2,000 years ago doesn’t directly disprove the idea that syphilis came back with Columbus, the researchers say. But the previous evidence for diverse Treponema strains in fifteenth century Europe and the revised evolutionary timescale for T. pallidum makes it even more unlikely. “All this points in the direction that they are not being imported from the Americas,” says Schuenemann. One possibility is that treponemal diseases emerged even earlier in Eurasia or Africa, and reached the Americas with the first humans to migrate there at least 15,000 years ago.'
- samus 3y ago> The researchers found that the T. pallidum genomes recovered from the bones were most similar to those of the modern subspecies that usually causes bejel — a disease that is not typically found in the Americas today. The ancient genomes were less similar to those of the strains usually associated with yaws or syphilis, which are both found in South America. This implies that the current distribution of T. pallidum subspecies differs from that of the past. TA basically describes that the story is a whole lot more complicated than a single spread in one direction. Together with the quote from a sibling comment it rather seems that a syphilis strain evolved in Europe replaced American strains.
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- RecycledEle 3y agoThe authors have new evidence, but are so politically correct that they can not reason.
- srge 3y agoI wonder how this microbe influenced human morality. Is the moral idea that promiscuity is bad a vestige of some healthy recommendation to avoid multiple partner to not get or propagate syphilis?
- gedy 3y agoYou answered your question, undoubtedly this was a huge factor, similar to food and other taboos.
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- DoesntMatter22 3y agoNot syphilis specifically but all STDs. Even today promiscuity can leave you with incurable STDs even if you wear a condom. Not to mention that some STDs are antibiotic resistant now. So imagine life before this. Sleeping around is going to leave you with constant green discharge or worse.
- swagempire 3y agoMoralizing aside, which ones specifically can infect you even if you wear a condom?
- 1999-03-31 3y agohttps://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/brief.html https://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/brief.html Notably herpes, hpv and syphilis can still be transmitted
- swagempire 3y ago"The most reliable ways to avoid transmission of STDs are to abstain from sexual activity, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner" Sounds very much like some Christian agenda bring pushed here. 50% of the population gets herpes and syphilis gets cured with antibiotics. HPV has a vaccine. The article itself says you won't get anything if you use a condom properly. But hey -- don't leave the house for fear of a car accident type thing...
- cyanydeez 3y agowonder how many nations it's pummled with it's clinical effects